


A Sea Without A Sky

by VSSAKJ



Category: Baten Kaitos
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-07 23:24:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17375156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VSSAKJ/pseuds/VSSAKJ
Summary: After the islands landed, cloud-watching became a common hobby. On any given day, you could pass by a half-dozen people settled down on knolls of grass, gazing upwards. Some pointed, tracing shapes for the enjoyment of their company; others stared, eyes wide and fixed, with their wings furled beneath them and tears streaking silently down their face.When the world changes, how do people learn to change with it?





	A Sea Without A Sky

“I expect you’re here to collect Gibari, aren’t you?” Anna wiped her hands and rested them on her hips. She smiled at him, because she always did, and Lyude swallowed uncomfortably around the feeling of being treated like a part of her family. She was kind, but other than his mother, family had never done him any kindness. “If I know my boys, he and Reblys’ll be down by the coast as usual. They’ve been trying to make sense of crabbing pots. Gibari says they make it all too easy, but they always come home without any catches.”

Anna was lovely, but Lyude made a neat bow and turned to exit—she’d keep him all day if he wasn’t careful, and he had places to be.

 

Every year, they found their way back to where they’d been when the islands landed. To hear Kalas and Xelha tell the story, they were also the places they’d all been standing when the Guardian Spirit left for good. Lyude always meant to ask Kalas if he’d ever heard anything from the Spirit after that last time, but whenever they were all together again, his tongue tied itself in a knot and even thinking about the question made him feel just as out of place as the day he’d been forced to betray them in Diadem.

A lot of things about his life were easier now. Alfard had proven the least equipped to adapt to life on the ground, floundering without an elected official and struggling beneath the weight of a military that had become obsolete overnight. The leaders of the other nations had stepped together to form a council, its prime intent the creation of a harmonious future together; Ladekahn, Corellia, Rodolfo, and Calbren made it a point to integrate the citizens of Alfard into life that functioned with the other nations, and Lyude found himself with a position as counsellor yet again. This time, his job seemed to be listening to the complaints of Alfardians, and relaying their concerns to the council of leads leaders so they could be addressed.

Much like saving the world, he didn’t think himself very good at it.

 

“Lyude!” Gibari’s grin was the same huge slice of his face it had always been, and he raised one well-muscled arm above his head in greeting, “That time of year again already?”

“Yes, Anna said I would find you here.” Lyude replied, picking his way down the stony incline and squinting against the salty sea wind. No matter how many times he found himself alongside it, the sea always took his breath away. It went on just as far as the sky had always seemed to—farther still, until the line between the two blurred away into nothing but blue distance.

“Anna.” Gibari said it fondly, then turned and cupped a hand to his mouth, bellowing, “Reblys! Time for the reunion! I’ll be back later!”

Lyude couldn’t hear any kind of reply, but evidently Gibari did, because he closed the distance between them and flung an arm around Lyude’s shoulder, still grinning.

“It’s always good to see everyone. Wonder how they’re all doing this year.”

As they began climbing back up the rocks, Lyude ventured a look over his shoulder, peering. Eventually, he hedged, “Does Reblys not…?”

Gibari shook his head, huffing as they reached level ground again. “Nah. He says there’s no point in fixating on history. Figures someone who always claims he has the biggest catch would like to forget all the times he got beat.”

Lyude smiled at the joke and fiddled with his hair. He used the excuse of heaving for air while he scrabbled back up the slope to avoid answering.

 

His own home was small, quiet, and desperately lonely. Lyude craved the company of other Alfardians, dutifully reaching out to them day after day under the cover of hearing their complaints just for the sake of having someone to talk to. His whole family was dead, but that didn’t stop him dreaming about the Phantom Goldoba and the words the ghosts whispered to him. At least when they’d been aloft, he’d had Ladekahn to support. At least when they were skybound, he’d travelled with the others and taken part in being something.

 

“Mizuti is first this year!” Mizuti declared as they came upon the grassy meadow framed by trees. Lyude marvelled at how much taller they’d grown in the last year, and how the moss clumped in the shade of the boughs. Mizuti went from floating crosslegged to bobbing alongside them in a moment, the bright red mask uncomfortably close to Lyude’s face, “Where is Savyna?”

“Yeah, that’s weird. Where is she?” Gibari wondered aloud, looking around like the tall, long-legged woman would appear from the shadows at any moment. Since the landing three years ago, Savyna had always arrived first. Lyude could pick out the particular tree she always favoured, and imagined her leaning against it with arms crossed and gaze focused on the sky. One time, he’d arrived alone and been lucky enough to catch a thin smile on her face—then she’d noticed him, and the expression had shuttered into neutrality as she raised an arm in greeting.

“I’m sure she’ll come.” Lyude said softly, trying not to think about Reblys and his opinion on the act of reuniting on the anniversary of the grounding. Of the ocean. Of everything.

“Mizuti, Gibari, Lyude!” It was Xelha’s voice that rang through the clearing, warm and bright and whole like it always was. Instantly, Lyude felt himself relax as she and Kalas came up to join them, looking just the same as they had the previous year. Xelha hugged him and he returned the motion, grateful for the ease of her embrace. Kalas looked around the clearing, the way he always did, with a shadowed expression and a distance in his eyes that reminded Lyude of the muddled place between sky and sea.

“It feels different this year.” Kalas muttered, loud enough to be heard but understated enough that he may not have meant to say it aloud.

“Because Savyna is late.” Mizuti declared.

Looking at the lines on Kalas’s face, Lyude thought The Great Mizuti might be mistaken on that count.

 

“Hey.” It was Ayme leaning in the doorframe, and Lyude shoved his full weight on the door as his heart skipped three beats. Before he could close it, Folon’s foot was wedged in the way, and Ayme’s fingers were pushed around the edge. “Don’t. We want to talk to you.”

“It’s…” Lyude looked over his shoulder, then wearily finished, “... almost eleven o’clock at night.”

“Well you’re usually busy during the day, aren’t you?” Ayme retorted, holding the door in place as Folon dropped his shoulder to shove. Lyude watched her nudge him sharply with her elbow, then lift her chin and meet his gaze. “Can we come in?”

“I…” Lyude let his shoulders slump and stepped away from the door. “I guess so.”

“Thank you.” Folon said, his voice lacking the sharpness Lyude expected but also the gratitude that would normally come from being welcomed in the middle of the night.

Lyude led them to his sitting room, which was hardly large enough for two people standing let alone three. He switched on the light while Ayme sat down on the couch, her knees spread and arms resting on them. Folon settled on the floor alongside her legs, crosslegged and feeling oddly absent despite his visible presence.

Lyude cleared his throat and swiveled the chair from his writing desk to face them, sitting with his back straight and a thin smile pasted across his face. Like a good ambassador should. “What can I do for you?”

“What can you do?” Ayme had opened her mouth, but Folon pounced on the question like a wild animal, his lips drawn back and his eyes narrowed. “Can you put things back the way they were, Ambassador? Can you un-murder Giacomo?”

The word made Lyude’s blood run cold, and he edged backwards in his chair as he was struck by the thought that they might be here to kill him. To take revenge for what they’d all done. And he was the easiest target.

Ayme sighed, placing a hand on Folon’s shoulder and squeezing it. He scowled, the expression petulant, and rolled his shoulder away from her grip, gazing moodily towards another corner of the room.

Turning her gaze back to Lyude, Ayme said, “We just wanted to talk about how it’s all changed.”

 

Soon, Lyude thought to himself, Savyna really would be late.

“I hope she’s alright.” Xelha worried, twisting her knuckles together. It was something of a miracle that Xelha, the Queen of Wazn (and, in Lyude’s opinion, the true saviour of them all), had time to spare standing in a field once a year. Lyude had overhead Kalas telling Gibari about how busy she kept herself; the Queen of Wazn was a ceremonial role in comparison to Ladekahn or Corellia’s manner of ruling, but Xelha never seemed to rest. She counselled with the other leaders, she blessed the birth of each child in her country, she wrote pages and pages of history accounting for their adventure… Kalas had been saying it like he was irritated, but the warmth under his irritation showed how proud he was of her.

They weren’t married, and Lyude sometimes wondered if they would ever bother.

Mizuti had returned to Gemma, aiming to map the world beginning at that point. Some said it had already been done, but Mizuti refused to listen—and Kee had sworn to help as much as he could. Gibari’s situation was similarly settled; he lived with Reblys and Anna and the daughter Anna had given birth to two years prior. Rumours abounded claiming that either of them was the father, but typical Anna refused to tell who it was in fact. Gibari had stood up and said he’d father little Mahua until Anna felt she could give them the truth, and Reblys had declared the same. So, unusual as it was, the toddler had two fathers and a smiling mother with a secret in her heart. Privately, Lyude believed it was the result Anna had wanted most of all.

“I haven’t asked yet Lyude, how are things going in Alfard?” Xelha had turned away from the place they expected Savyna to appear and was smiling at him. “Has anything changed in the last year?”

Had it? Lyude bit his lip and looked away.

 

“Helping at the last moment doesn’t make you a hero.” Ayme spoke in the glow of his living room lamp, her hands resting between her widespread knees as she frowned in the floor’s direction. “And we’re soldiers. What are we supposed to do in a peaceful world?”

Lyude sat back, aware that his mouth had fallen open. The ennui of most Alfardians was to do with finding jobs the new world needed; many of them had been concerned about food, money, the education of their children. A lavish lifestyle had vanished in an instant, and people needed new ways to occupy their soft, idle hands. But here were two people who’d never before stopped to breathe, and who found it difficult in the aftermath, when the air went still.

When had he started to think of Ayme and Folon as people?

“Giacomo was my family.” Folon muttered, clearly still cross with Ayme. “Everything was for him. He was taking care of us. Power was to help him, so he could help us. What’s left in this empty place?”

“The world isn’t empty.” Lyude was surprised to hear his own voice finally finding something to say, though he wished it hadn’t cracked on the last note.

That caught Folon’s attention, swift as a hunter animal sensing weakness. He bared his teeth, rising up from the floor.

Lyude stumbled to his feet in turn just as Ayme’s hand snaked out to seize Folon’s wrist. He shivered, then shook his head sharply once and yanked himself from her grip. For a moment, Lyude was sure Folon was going to upend his side table and the lamp on it, but instead he stalked away to the door frame and hunkered into the darkness of the hallway.

Sharply, Ayme called after him. “You wanted to come here.”

Lyude choked back his questions while Folon’s shoulders moved; he shuffled in place a moment, then simply said, “I hate it.”

“You’re not alone.” Lyude heard himself again, unsure of where the words were coming from. “Plenty of people in Alfard hate this too. They miss what we used to have. They miss the sky.”

Folon looked over his shoulder, pinching the skin on one wrist between his fingers. His expression was strange—bewildered, and strangely hopeful, Lyude thought.

“It’s still out there, you know.” Ayme leaned back on the couch, spreading her arms and tipping her head back. Her mouth was a firm line. “You can see it every day.”

“But you can’t be part of it anymore.” Folon groused.

 

“Sorry I’m late.” Savyna melted into view, walking slower than was usual for her. A second later, the reason became apparent: toddling a few steps behind her, barely as high as her knee, was a black-haired child with wide eyes and desperately tiny fingers. Lyude felt his mouth fall open but as usual, Xelha managed to react first.

In a second, she’d gone a few steps closer, smile wide on her face, “Savyna, is she yours? She’s beautiful.” Then Xelha crouched down, arms around her knees as she beckoned to the child. “What’s your name?”

“Shazna.” Savyna spoke the answer, crouching down herself and scooping the child up in one arm. “She doesn’t talk yet.”

Kalas looked at Mizuti and Lyude, blinking. Lyude shrugged gently, unsure what else to do.

Gibari was the next to act, going over to Savyna’s side and reaching out to ruffle Shazna’s hair. “She can’t be very old yet. Strong kid, walking already.”

“She has to keep up.” Savyna spoke without changing her inflection, but Lyude thought there was some warmth in her words that hadn’t been there before. “She’ll be a year in a couple of months. It’s hard to believe.”

“I’ll say!” Kalas blurted out, stalking over; Lyude noticed Shazna cling at Savyna’s shoulder and hide her face away from the harshness in his tone. “Savyna, you would have— you have to have known— why didn’t you tell us anything?!”

“Kalas.” Xelha’s voice chided as storm clouds rolled into Savyna’s eyes. Before she could open her mouth, Kalas had turned on his heel, hands in the air.

“This is about where we were when it happened. We’re supposed to be those people.”

Xelha sighed loudly and went after him.

 

Lyude’s sitting room had become unbearably quiet. Ayme’s unreadable gaze remained fixed on his ceiling—or something beyond it—and Folon had claimed the shadows of the hallway as his own, his arms wrapped around his legs and his gaze downcast. Between them, Lyude remained standing, feeling as hesitant as an unasked question.

“Maybe that’s what Alfard is.” Lyude was surprised to find his voice breaking the silence, though it was less firm than he would have liked it to be. Ayme raised a brow; Folon turned his head to look. “Alfard’s always been somewhere that you belong or you don’t. It doesn’t matter how gold and shiny it is, if you’re not a part of it, you’re just looking in from the outside.”

Without thinking, he went to his front window, gazing out onto the darkened street. Even now, in the gloom of evening, burnished metal glinted like fangs in the dark: the suggestion of eyes and ears watching. Lyude crossed his arms over his middle and kept going, heedless that he had turned his back on his potentially dangerous company and was speaking away from them. His apartment was still quiet enough to hear the hum of motors running in the distance. 

“I’ve thought before that maybe it would be better if we were still in the sky. But maybe that’s because I’ve never been very good at what’s expected of me, and it feels like now that we’ve landed here, we’re supposed to have changed. I haven’t. I imagine you two haven’t either.”

Now Lyude turned to look at them, but they were both staring at him like he was mad. Shrugging his shoulders slightly, he went on; now that he’d started, he wasn’t sure he could stop. “I’ve been a disappointment to everyone around me for my entire life. When the world changed, I thought that might make things different. It hasn’t.” Now he smiled, his lips twisting into an expression that felt painful. “I still feel just as misplaced as always, and now more people are looking to me for answers when I don’t even have them for myself.”

Folon had gotten up and stalked closer, his body strung taut like a wire. Ayme remained on the couch, so for some reason, Lyude wasn’t afraid. Folon jabbed Lyude in the chest with a single finger, then said dismissively, “I didn’t think you’d talk so much.”

Despite himself, Lyude felt his cheeks go red. “I didn’t think I would either.” He admitted, and Ayme’s laughter crackled through the room like a lightning. A second later, Folon started laughing too and then, Lyude heard himself joining in. He laughed until there were tears in his eyes, and he had no idea why.

 

“Did he expect us to stay the same forever?” Savyna mused aloud; Lyude was surprised to realise she was talking to him, even though her eyes were on Shazna toddling between Mizuti’s floating toes and Gibari’s outstretched hands. “Life goes on. We have to. The world did.”

Lyude watched Kalas make yet another cutting motion with his arms as Xelha threw her arms down in frustration and wondered what they were saying to one another. It was apparent the disagreement had grown larger than what they’d observed before Kalas thundered away but somehow their words were being kept between them.

“I guess it surprised him.” Lyude finally said in a hushed voice.

“You seem happier this year.” Savyna countered, and when Lyude looked at her she met his gaze. He felt his eyebrows jump and then he looked away, towards his feet or the dirt or anywhere but those knowing eyes.

Just then, the moment happened. It had been the same every year: Lyude was beset by a weighted feeling like a huge blanket being lain over his shoulders, and the whole clearing went silent—even the baby toddled into a sitting position and gazed upwards, as though her heart knew. The silence grew around him until it roared like a lion in his ears; each of them stood as still as a single blade of grass, all apart but somehow together, too. The shadow of Malpercio wafted over them like a passing cloud, and then it was gone, drifting away to return next year. The ground beneath their feet felt harder and stronger than it had before.

Lyude wondered if the feeling would happen anywhere, or if it was an effect of this nondescript field that could have been nowhere, but was instead a place that meant a lot to him. To all of them.

Kalas stumped back over to them, Xelha following behind with a look on her face that Lyude found hard to read. Kalas seemed to have calmed down; he looked at Savyna and spoke gruffly, “Sorry. I should be grateful you’re here.”

Savyna chuckled, giving Lyude a look that made it clear she knew what she was saying, and replied to Kalas, “My, you _have_ changed.”

And maybe, Lyude thought, he had.


End file.
